


Who I am and who I could be

by a_walking_shadow



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s11e10 The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 08:59:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17722157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_walking_shadow/pseuds/a_walking_shadow
Summary: Good is not nice.The Doctor is managing one of them. She knows she's going to need some help with the other one.





	Who I am and who I could be

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Son" by Sleeping At Last.

Good does not mean nice.

He knew that, probably. Whether he remembered it in his final moments, gasping out an oath for whoever came next, when he ordered her to be “nice” and “kind” and not “good” …

Or, perhaps more importantly, whether he realised the importance of it. Oh, he may not have been nice, all the time, but he was good. Of that there was no doubt. He hid it behind more spikes than on the average vinvocci, but his hearts were pure gold. It might not have even occurred to him that his successor could be any different.

She, on the other hand, loads up her pack with explosives, and wonders.

 

Tim Shaw lived. She gave him one last chance, he didn’t take it, and then, instead of dying, he lived.

Quite a few of her enemies seem to have that habit.

 

Hope is a powerful thing. It’s one of the reasons she loves humans so much. Always that stubborn little spark, regardless of the circumstances. The whispered promise that things will get better, that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, even if it seems impossibly far away. There’s something about it- the defiance, maybe, the fearlessness- which brings a smile to her face and has her throwing in her lot with the oppressed masses, time and time again.

She hopes, too. Differently, and for something infinitely harder to achieve.

That’s the problem with ambition, isn’t it? She can’t settle for one victory here, a small change there, not when she drops back into the vortex and feels time curl around her, millennia of death and destruction woven into its very fabric.

Dangerous thoughts, she knows, especially for someone like her. But. What if she could break the pattern? What if there really was one good dalek. What if Davros really was dead, this time. What if this AI is really trying to help, what if that company wants the best for its workers, what if this war never gets off the ground because they all sit down and talk. Colonists might, on this one planet, respect the indigenous life forms, if they realise what they’re doing early enough. Maybe, just this once, this isolated group of humans won’t turn into yet another genesis for the cybermen. If only, if only.

But, honestly-

(and she knows it’s the planet doing this, psychotropic waves whispering, tugging at her thoughts, twisting them in knots, but they can’t make her think this unless the idea of it was there in the first place, they can’t create something out of nothing, only manipulate what’s already there-)

Honestly, she’s just so _tired_. The same patterns, repeating themselves over and over and over again. The same faces, up to the same old tricks all over the universe, never truly stopping no matter how many times she wins. What’s the point in hoping for change if all of the players stay the same?

This time. This time, she’ll do it, she’ll stop him, she’ll make sure he never hurts anyone again, even if that means-

A Doctor without hope is a dangerous thing.

He- The Doctor- told her to be kind. To be nice. Oh, she can offer apologies and console the terrified civilians. Nice is easy, at least as long as no one looks too closely and sees that she’s already planning fifteen steps ahead.

He didn’t tell her to be good. But she knows him, probably better than she knows herself, even after all this time. She knows what that promise was supposed to mean.

What she does know about herself: it’s going to be a lot of work to keep that promise.

She knows what Graham’s going to ask her before he even opens his mouth. She’d felt his anger surge the moment Tim Shaw first appeared, and then his resolve cementing itself. She knows what he’s planning, and she knows that she can’t hope to talk him out of it, but she still has to try.

‘You're better than this. You are. You have to be. If you kill him, I can't have you travel with me. That's if you even live.’

She means it, too. More than ever, she needs these humans to listen to her and do the right thing, the just thing, the _good_ thing, because she isn’t sure that she’s going to do that for herself.

She needs her humans. She needs them to enforce her rules and keep her from going too far. She needs them to be good so that she knows when she isn’t. She can’t let Graham kill Tim Shaw, because if he does then he won’t be able to stop her next time.

_I need you to be better than me._


End file.
